James Delahunty
8 Feb 2006 5:09
Indications from the recording industry would have you believing that P2P use overall is declining due to litigation again music file sharers in countries around the world. However, this is not the truth. In fact, overall, there has been a 13.28% increase in users since January 2005. The figures represent simultaneously connected users but only on P2P networks, BitTorrent users are not counted. This brings the P2P population even higher.
Figures from BigChampagne show that in August 2005, a new record of 9.62 million users was set. In the US alone, a record of 6.97 million users was reached in December. According to BigChampagne both of these records set last year were broken in January 2006 with the addition of 116,000 P2P users. This brings the global total to a record 9,670,552 simultaneous users. The US contributed 8,265 to this number, and reached its own record of 6.98 million users.
This gives you an idea of the steady growth P2P networks see each year, despite increased litigation, but not even just lawsuits against sharers this time round. 2005 was a bad year for P2P software developers too, especially in the United States when the Supreme Court ruled that owners of P2P networks/software could be held liable under some circumstances for copyright infringement taking place by its users.
Source:
Slyck